and all her wanders

travel; hobart, tasmania: day 2

13 December, 2014

Coming from Sydney where cafes are busiest on weekends, its odd to find that very few cafes (and most shops for that matter) open on Sundays in Hobart. It does make the decision process a lot easier on where to go. We were tossing between a favourite (Jackman & McRoss) and Machine Laundry. Seeing that we’ve already tried Jackman before, we decided to check out Machine Laundry. Being one of the few cafe opened, some waiting time was expected. Luckily we allowed a bit more time just incase. We only waited about 20mins before we got a table.

Machine Laundry Cafe really is what its name suggests – a Laundromat. What a cool concept of customers enjoying breakfast or a cup of coffee while they wait for their laundry.

Bruny Island was on the itinerary that day. Yes, we only had 2 full days in Hobart, yet we decided we want to take a roadtrip somewhere. We didn’t do much research prior to the trip, we pretty much decided on Burny Island a week prior and made sure we booked our car from a car hire company (Thrifty) which allowed us to drive to Bruny.

The Old New Egg Dish – eggs scrambled with fetta on garlic sourdough with beetroot relish and wild rocket with crispy pancetta

I really loved the beetroot in this dish as it helps get you through such a heavy dish of scrambled eggs and bacon. I have yet to attempt brunch at home inspired by this very dish.

The houses in Hobart (especially Battery Point) are so cute, even with that rustic look. I hope to do a bit more wandering around in this area on foot next time.

Salamanca Place, on non-Market days.

*multiple exposure test*

Well, we were hoping to catch the 10:30AM ferry from Kettering but sadly we were just 10mins too late. Ideally you should arrive 15-30mins before the ferry departs just so you can get into the queue of cars boarding. We had to wait around 30mins for the next one. Luckily it was an interesting spot with boats and yachts, so we passed time by taking photos with and of them ;P

Boarding on to the Bruny Island Ferry. It was our first time being in a car on a ferry. You could get out of the car but theres really not much to wander around to so we just stayed in our comfy spot and slowly watched the land ahead come closer. Its approx a 15min trip, so it is fairly close by.

Where to go first? We decided to drive out to the furthest point of the island and then drop in to attractions on the way back. As you can tell from the weather, it really wasn’t the best day. It was start/stop raining majority of the time.

We got to Cape Bruny Lighthouse, if it was a good day I’m sure we would’ve made the trek up but sadly a photo from afar would have to do, just to say – We’ve been here. I should add that the at least an hour of the drive there was going through unsealed, bumpy roads. The poor rental car got quite a workout, and so did we… trying not to panic that we were stuck in the middle of no where without reception.

If I knew we could actually travel with liquids more than 100ml on interstate flights, I would’ve bought a few berry sauces etc.

We were pretty relieved to find ourselves back onto the main road. Along the way was a Berry farm – which sounded cool. There wasn’t much to see especially since it was raining. They had a little shop selling berry products, refreshments and icecream. It was too cold for ice cream but we had it anyways because of the unique “Tasmanian pepper berry” flavour they had, which has a cinnamon-ny peppery taste. Interesting in a nice way!

There was a lovely beach across the road, which would’ve been really nice to check out and take photos at if it wasn’t raining 🙁

We thought we would’ve gotten a much dirtier car considered how many hours of driving we did on unsealed roads in the rain.

The most popular thing to do when in Bruny Island, is to check out the view of Bruny Island Neck. It was freezing cold, raining and I was in a dress… yet we made the run up God knows how many stairs to get to the top (most painful run ever!). Then we got to the top and saw this view, it was all worth it. Even cooler to think we drove from this end to the other on this narrow stretch of land. Wish we could’ve stayed longer but we were already getting drenched at this point. Quick snap, a selfie and we’re off… back into the car with the heater on max.

I love cheese tasting, so naturally we had to stop by Bruny Island Cheese Co.

Awesome peeking into this little room which had shelves and shelves of cheese, just ageing away. The numbers marked are the dates of when they were made.

We were cold and had not eaten anything since breakfast, so a ham & cheese sourdough toastie from the cheese co. sounded perfect… and it tasted deeelicious. The toastie was made with their very own Raw milk C2 cheese.

We couldn’t resist not going back to Sydney with some fresh produce of Tassie so after testing out all the cheeses they had on offer, we ended up with two – ODO (One Day Old cheese) and Saint. Both relatively ‘young’ cheeses, but would taste even more awesome as they age (if you’re into that old cheese taste).

The one thing we will never forget the taste of from Tassie, has to be their oysters! From our first trip to Tassie, we ate oysters when we got the chance to. The flavours are nothing like what we can buy from Sydney seafood markets, perhaps its the freshness – there is never an odd taste in the mouth afterwards. When googling about where to have Oysters for our recent trip, Get Shucked Oyster farm kept coming up.. the downside it was in Bruny Island – so that is a reason why we decided to go Bruny Island. The cool thing about Get Shucked is, it has the first ever “Oyster bar drive thru” in the world. You can eat in of course, but for those who were only in Bruny Island for a day and wanted to jam pack as much as they can in.. this was perfect. Well, we were one of those people. 30mins before the ferry arrives, we made a pitstop on the way to pick up a doz Oysters for dinner. We were in and out within a few minutes.

The views from the highways in Hobart are always so amazing

Seeing that there isn’t much ‘interesting’ choices for dinner on Sunday nights in Hobart, we decided to stay in with an easy dinner (thanks Woolworths!) for our last night. Of course the best dish of the night had to be the freshly shucked oysters from Bruny Island, it was just enough for the both of us. I wish we were there for longer so we could have more oysters during the trip… but I guess that will be the reason for us to go back in the near future!

It was such a nice short getaway during the busiest times, just what we both needed. Something about Tasmania that has me hooked…. aaaand I can’t wait to go back! Hopefully for a much longer trip so we can tick off a few places we’ve been wanting to explore but never got the chance to in previous trips! E.g. Cradle Mountain!!